BY
ROGER POCOCK.
WARD, LOCK & CO., LIMITED,
LONDON, NEW YORK, & MELBOURNE.
THE BLACKGUARD
"Think of your sins,
What made you a soldier a-serving the Queen:
God save the Queen,
And God save the duffer who thinks of to-morrow.
God save the man who remembers his sorrow,
God save the man who can think of the past,
Sundown at last:
Here's rest for the past, and here's hope for the morrow!"
That is exactly what the bugle said toa man who was sitting on the edge ofthe bench-land in the evening calm. Hewas a very big man, dressed in a greywoollen undershirt, worn-out riding-breecheswith a two-inch yellow stripedown the legs, and jack-boots. By hisside lay a broad grey slouch-hat, such ascowboys wear; on his knees abath-towel—dry; and in his neighbourhoodlingered a faint aroma of stables. Theman's bare arms were like the thighs ofan average sinner, his shoulders, thighs,breast, neck, all of gigantic strengthand beauty, a sight that would haveappealed to any athlete as beyond theloveliness of women.
The setting sun just touched his wavy,crisp, black hair with a lustre of metal.Again, his face, still, strong, silent, hadan odd suggestiveness of a bronze statue,that of something Greek but uncanny,a faun, perhaps, or a satyr. The hair,sweeping low over his brows, mightalmost conceal incipient horns; his earsmight have been tufted; his featuresdefying all the rules—stuck on anyhow; thesubtle devilry of his deep black eyes, theugly fascination, the whimsical dignity;the bearing lofty, defiant, almostmagnificent; and again, an air, indefiniteenough, of sorrowful majesty;—how welleverything about the man fitted onename—the Blackguard.
That was La Mancha's name, by consentof the five troops of the MountedPolice; and somehow the common use ofit conveyed no sense of reproach butrather of endearment. From theCommissioner down to the smallest recruitthe whole five hundred were half-afraidof him, except one man; yet no civilianventured to speak ill of the Blackguard,or he would have had his head punched.To say bad things about the Blackguardwas to slight the Force.
And the one man who did not fear thislatter-day satyr, who ruled him as mindrules matter, was a certain little Corporal,who, with a neat briar pipe well alight,was picking his dainty way over thegravel—coming down from the camp inthe evening calm. This was CorporalDandy Irvine, with a sunburnt face, aneatly-pointed moustache, the buttons ofhis scarlet jacket glowing like gold in thelight, whose clothes always fitted, whoseforage-cap was correctly poised on threehairs, whose boots and spurs were alwaysbrilliantly polished. And now he justtouched the Blackguard to show that hewas present, and sat down beside himwithout any remarks whatever. So, forfive minutes, the two looked gravely outover the valley like Dignity andImpudence, both too lazy to speak.
They were looking across the KootenayValley—the upper Kootenay, from atongue of the bench-land made by thedeep gulch of Wild Horse Creek whereit came down from the mountains. Attheir backs rose the huge timberedfoothills of the Rocky Mountains; opposite,across the vast Kootenay trench, rose thestill mightier foothills of the Selkirks,and high above the deepening purple ofthe forests soared the clear cool azure ofthe snows up into the silence of those